


Burn It Out

by LynnLarsh



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A total of two whole kisses, Endless Sass, F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Kidge - Freeform, Mild Gore, Mild Language, Sappy Endings, poetic narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 17:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10926354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LynnLarsh/pseuds/LynnLarsh
Summary: Awareness, as he quickly comes to understand, is as impossible to unlearn as a skill set honed to muscle memory.





	Burn It Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kali_asleep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kali_asleep/gifts).



> I was listening to Traveling at the Speed of Light by Joywave (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GrPSqUhvVk) and was struck with the sudden, completely random and unshakable need to write some Kidge. Give it a listen while you're reading if you want. But anyway. Pair that with my recent attempts at a more poetic narrative style, and you've got this. 
> 
> Hope all Kidge fans (and anyone else who decides to give this a chance) get a heartwarming kick out of this.

The first time it happens is in combat.

The lions are spread paper thin amongst the expanse of space, too far away to form Voltron but still close enough for voices to be thrown slapdash against the airwaves. Shouts and curses muddle between orders that mean everything and nothing in the heat of battle. In training, Lance calls him a hotshot, Hunk calls him a spitfire. Shiro calls him an Honorable Discharge in the making. Their voices aren’t what he hears, though.

“If you get yourself killed, I’m going to wire your brain into a Galra sentinel and kill it myself,” Pidge shouts into the coms just as Keith breaks formation to charge head first into the fray. Keith feels the warning not just as a threat, but as a promise. Don’t die, she says. You’ll regret it, she says. And something settles beneath his breastbone like a spike. Like a tumor, metastasized and growing.

“Challenge accepted,” Keith chuckles, voice low and electric as he barrels head first towards the main ship of the Galra fleet, firing a blast into its rear flank. Everything is a blur from there, but Keith remembers her exuberant shout, everyone’s congratulatory nonsense, the battle continuing for less than thirty clicks.

The first time it happens, the realization hits him like a Galra canon to the sternum. She might as well have killed him.

He can’t stop thinking about it after that. Can’t stop thinking about _her_.

It’s an awareness that’s far from quiet, jarring and sudden like the Castle alarms, startling him awake when he hadn’t even realized he’d been sleeping. It spreads with disturbing swiftness, a disease that infects each word, each thought, each memory. He’s aware of every instance of closeness and separation. He’s aware of every compliment, every argument, every jibe. Smiles, frowns, eye rolls, scoffs, the dimple in her left cheek when she grins wide in excitement, the furrow in her brow when she’s frustrated with a project. He’s suddenly aware of it all.

And awareness, as he quickly comes to understand, is as impossible to unlearn as a skill set honed to muscle memory. 

Before too long, he’s cataloging each action, analyzing every interaction. He can all but feel the distance between them on the speeder as they race across the desert with Shiro in tow, can hear his own heart pounding in his ears at the thought that she might leave the team to search solo for her family. He can see her mistakes in combat, her successes with the alien tech, her form when sparring (erratic but deadly), when hacking (hunched and wild-eyed), when sleeping (brow unfurrowed, glasses askew, an exhausted body demanding a moment of peace).

At first, Keith embraces it, tricks himself into thinking it will be better for the team, to be aware not just of her, but of everyone. Better for training, better for battle. Except, it’s not everyone that he is aware of, and he knows it. So he ignores it next, pretends it never happened, that whatever circuit has rewired his brain can be unconnected, a lamp unplugged. But even a sentence written in pencil, freshly sharpened lead scratching out unnecessary truths on paper, can still leave a phantom image behind when erased. Never truly ignored, never truly gone.

So the problem becomes keeping it in.

Keith has never been good at that, at reigning in what should be kept buried, suppressed, avoided. He rips apart the cage that says _Don’t Fight_ with bloodied knuckles and black eyes. He breaks open the chest that says _Shiro Is Dead_ with explosives and conspiracy theories and Blue.

He unlocks the safe that says _Don’t Love Her, She Won’t Love You Back_ with a poorly timed kiss and a piece of shrapnel through the shoulder.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” She screams right before, her face rushing into his line of sight. She’s a mess of tangled hair and soot. One of her glasses lenses is cracked. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, but instead of telling her so, he pulls her down, pulls her in, lets himself drown in her once, just once.

“What the fuck are you doing?” She whispers right after, face blotched red and eyes panicked. His blood is on her lips. Her hands are shaking. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, but instead of telling her so, he passes out.

Everything in between is barely more than a blur. Flashes of hands, bloodied and shaking. The sound of Pidge’s voice shouting orders then questions then pleas. The feel of pain, pain, _pain_ , before nothing at all. The memory of her lips, chapped and covered in dust from the debris, is a constant presence in the periphery of his barely semiconscious mid. 

As first kisses go, he would have preferred less blood loss.

He wakes up in the healing pod to the usual image of his team, his family, their faces eagerly waiting the alien tech to release him. When he finally stumbles free, it’s Shiro’s arms that catch him, but it’s Pidge’s eyes that ensnare his instant and unwavering attention.

It’s obvious in the crease of her forehead, the way she worries tirelessly at her bottom lip. It’s obvious in the way she crosses and uncrosses her arms over her chest, the way her eyes hold his for seconds at a time before darting down to look at her shoes, over to the right to look at the wall, over to Coran, Lance, Hunk, Allura, Shiro, and back to him.

She thinks that he’s forgotten, that he was concussed or delusional or high from the blood loss, that maybe he may not have realized what he was doing. She thinks he may not have meant it. Whether she’s lamenting these possibilities or hoping for them is yet to be determined.

As per Paladin Post-Pod Protocol, Keith is ushered into the kitchens for some food goo before even given a chance to approach her. When she lingers in the doorway, there’s anticipation, promise. But when she lets him pass without a word, doesn’t follow the rest of them into the kitchens, it fizzles. Doesn’t die, not quite yet, but starts to burn away at the corners, curling up into browned and smoking edges.

When he doesn’t see her for the rest of the day, despite searching, despite waiting, the flickering orange of a spreading fire sets in, that promise all but aflame the longer he sits and does nothing. The longer he goes without confronting her, the harsher is burns.

So he takes out the boxes that say _Don’t Overreact, Don’t Be Stupid About This_ and sets those on fire too.

It takes some pressuring, some rather awkward begging, but eventually he’s led from paladin to paladin to Pidge. She’s alone on the main deck, looking out over a vast expanse of star maps too dense and filled with complicated diagrams for Keith to begin to understand. In a way, it seems fitting. She’s filled every inch of him recently, rewritten him with complex algorithms and insane hypotheticals, boiled him down to something unsolvable, something lacking the variables necessary to function again.

Even without saying a word, he knows that she’s aware of his presence. Her hands pause amidst the holograms she’s been manipulating. She doesn’t turn around, but her shoulders tense, her back straightens. 

“I’m sorry,” Keith says without warning, and it’s a sign of her training that she doesn’t flinch at the volume of his voice. He’s not sure if he’s allowed to be proud of that fact, but he is. She doesn’t say anything in response, so he presses on, presses forward, comes to stand at her side amongst the star maps and endless universe beyond.

He hadn’t rehearsed what to say, he realizes. Probably should have pulled a Lance and practiced in the mirror, probably should have pulled a Hunk and asked for advice, for help. He probably should have talked to Shiro. He always talks to Shiro. But he’s never been good about planning ahead. Not when it’s important.

Not when it matters.

“I’m sorry for not asking first,” is what comes out of his mouth eventually. Of all the things he could have said, for some reason this seems the most pressing. He should have asked, they should have talked, he should have been less brash, more careful. Then maybe things would have been different. Then maybe she wouldn’t be slowly turning to look at him, eyes wide and mouth slightly parted. Then maybe she wouldn’t be shaking her head at him, chuckling softly at him, smiling in amusement at- Wait.

Without a word, Pidge waves her hand at the control panel, making all the diagrams and star maps disappear. All that’s left is the universe, an empty control room, and her. With a sigh, she turns, stands her ground in front of him, and as if none of the tension of before had existed, she digs a pointer finger directly into the center of his chest.

“You’re an ass.”

Keith bristles. He can’t help it. He doesn’t fight it though, doesn’t even attempt to argue, so that’s something, isn’t it? Instead, he lets her explain, aware that he probably deserves it, but desperate to know why.

“Rule number one of confessions, Keith,” Pidge frowns, a seriousness in her expression that doesn’t quite match the sparkle in her eyes. She pokes him again for good measure. “Rule number _one_. Never kiss a girl for the first time when you’re literally dying in her arms. Do you have any idea what the does to a heart rate?”

“I wasn’t-”

“You couldn’t have just kissed me in a spur of the moment, pre battle confession like a normal person?”

“I mean, that’s _kinda_ what I-”

“Or, you know, just asked me out on a date to the nearest inhabitable planet or something. G’lax2b has three moons orbiting an exploding star. You could have kissed me under _three moons_ , Keith.”

“I didn’t think-”

“No,” Pidge cuts him off again, this time with a tone to her voice that brokers no argument, a seriousness that is rare for the paladin of the Green Lion, and even more rare for the girl whom Keith has spent the last five years getting to know. It’s a voice that demands his attention, a voice that tells him, whatever she says next will change everything. Rewritten algorithms, a Galra canon to the sternum, an unlocked safe just waiting to be opened.

“You didn’t think, Keith,” Pidge says, tone no nonsense, and despite the amusement in her eyes, Keith can’t help but flinch. Doesn’t mean he can look away though. He feels like he hasn’t looked away from her in a long, long time. “If you’d been thinking, you’d have asked me how I felt about _you_ , like, ten Spicolian Movements ago. Then maybe we could have done the whole First Kiss thing like normal humans instead of defenders of the universe, you know?”

It takes him a while to catch on, her ability to ramble at warp speed never more taxing than in this moment. He feels like he should be cataloguing and storing every second of her speech, memorizing it to put in some of the good chests, the boxes meant for safe keeping, but he can barely follow. Especially when she gives him no time to respond, and no time at all to keep up.

“You’re just going to have to make sure that our second kiss is a good one,” she says, finally removing her finger from his sternum to cross both arms over her chest with a definitive huff. “You know. To make up for it.”

A tick passes, then another, another, enough of them for Pidge to realize that Keith may or may not have fallen behind. She sighs again, this time with that same amusement as before, that same smile he’s fallen in love with pulling at the corner of her lips.

“Keith,” she whispers, like sharing a secret. Her eyes are twinkling, just like the stars. “I’m asking you to kiss me.”

Somewhere deep inside of him, a safe doesn’t just open, it falls apart at the hinges.

When he kisses her again, there is no blood loss. When he wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her closer, there’s no combat, no explosions, no alarms. When he lets her part his lips for her tongue, there’s no rush, no forgotten detail, just a moment filled with her breath on his face, her hands in his hair, her teeth against his bottom lip. When they pull apart, it’s with the promise of more, a promise new and unburned.

“Better,” Pidge says, panting softly against him. Her hair is tousled from his hands, her face flushed and lips swollen from his kisses. Her glasses lay too far down her nose, that one cracked lens already fixed. When she smiles up at him, he spots the dimple in her left cheek. 

She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

So he tells her so.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> For any of you guys who subscribe to me for some specific stuff, I'll be back up and posting very soon. Real Life has been kicking my ass recently, but I think I finally have things under control again.
> 
> Thank you all for being patient, and all of my love to those of you who throw comments and kudos my way. You're the reason I can never stay away for too long.


End file.
